10:10am Thursday 3rd December 2009
OUR guilty bankers are like masked robbers caught with their swag in their getaway cars – then inexplicably allowed to escape with their plunder.
One year after the near-collapse of the British banking system, it is clear that all meaningful attempts at ending its greed culture have been abandoned by our cowed Government.
But there is one final chance to make the banks pay for landing the taxpayer with a £1 trillion bail-out, if ministers would just seize the day . . .
Total victory for the City was confirmed with last week’s report by Sir David Walker into how – or, in this case, how not – to tackle bumper bank pay and bonuses.
When Sir David was appointed in February, we were told that nothing would be offlimits in a fearless crusade to ensure that the bankers’ party was over.
Bonuses would be hacked back and boardrooms opened up to replace the rotten, backscratching, old boys network with a system that was open, accountable and, crucially, less dangerous for the rest of us.
Nine months on, bonuses will merely be delayed – not capped – and there will simply be a feeble requirement to reveal, anonymously, how many bankers earn more than £1m.
Apparently, a salary of under £1m does not make one a “high end” earner in the City, worthy of scrutiny. Future Fred Goodwins can sleep easily in their four-posters.
However, it would be wrong to think that a £1m threshold touches only a small number of bankers. Yesterday, the Government revealed the number expected to trouser more than that this year: at least 5,000.
Some people wondered whether Sir David’s conclusions were in any way connected to his history in the City – as the former chairman of Morgan Stanley and deputy chairman of Lloyds. Heaven forbid.
To add insult to injury, his report came as the secret £62bn loan to RBS and HBOS was revealed – and as the banks were allowed to carry on imposing punitive overdraft charges. Heads they win, tails we lose.
All this would be scandalous even if the banks didn’t owe their very existence to us taxpayers, who have provided cash or guarantees worth anything up to £1,000bn.
But Chancellor Alistair Darling can still catch up with the speeding getaway car if he is brave enough to use next week’s “mini- Budget” to slap a tax on bank profits.
Only a tax will ensure banks help plug the black hole they opened up – instead of enjoying state protection to make mega-profits with their return to “casino capitalism”.
The levy is the idea of Vince Cable, the Liberal Democrat Treasury spokesman and economic “sage”, but it even enjoys support in the Financial Times.
Is the Government really going to be softer on the bankers than the FT?
SEDGEFIELD MP Phil Wilson believes he has detected a fatal flaw in David Cameron’s claim to be a “progressive Conservative”.
He told MPs: “How can they be progressive and conservative at the same time? I checked the Oxford English Dictionary and it defined progressive as “favouring change and innovation”.
For conservative, it said “averse to change or innovation”.
“So there we have it – a political philosophy that is a contradiction in terms, schizophrenic, Jekyll and Hyde, pulling one way then another, pointing in two directions at the same time.”
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